Several decades ago one of the Galactic Corporations sent out a colony ship on a mission to scout and colonize one of the Eden-class Earth-like worlds.

Unfortunately, due to glaring negligence on the lower levels of the corporate bureaucracy, instead of landing on one such planet, the colony ship was lost in a debris field and ended up crash-landing on an inhospitable piece of rock with barely any good soil to cultivate.

This piece of rock was a wasteland world that became known as H.E.L. VI in the Corporate List of Unprofitable Worlds.

Due to the interference caused by the debris field, the mission was quickly ruled out as having failed, and the Corporation proceeded to forget about its existence whatsoever.

But the colonists survived. After all, they had nowhere to go, no means of reaching out for the rest of humanity, and besides, they were used to hard labor - indebted farmers, miners bound by draconian contracts, all kind of working class nobodies oppressed and bereaved, almost ground to dust by the cogs in the corporate machine.

The thing the Helians learned while scavenging the crashed ship and establishing some semblance of infrastructure was that the planet was filled to the brim with mineral ore deposits.

The second thing the Helians learned about their new home was that the planet already had inhabitants.

Commonly referred to as the Swarm, the natives of H.E.L. VI were a hegemony of giant insect species, all living in an ant-like society with a rigid hierarchy.

By a stroke of luck, the first Swarm colony the Helians encountered was not hostile. The humans learned quickly that if they don't poke their noses into the insects' affairs, they would not retaliate. Not wanting to risk the wrath of an entire colony, the miners found ways to avoid the Swarm entirely while trying to make ends meet.

The other Swarm colonies the humans found proved to be more territorial, driving the human patrols away and breaking noise-making industrial equipment.

The most trouble was caused by the desert Swarm colonies. The harsh climate had driven those creatures to seek water and nutrition aggressively, attacking both the other Swarm colonies and the human convoys.

The desert variant of the Swarm became known as the Antlions, especially because the entrances to their colonies were placed in sandy sinkholes.

To repeal the Antlion attacks, the Helian colonists developed a network of thumper towers - devices that used hydraulics to “thump” the ground, creating a constant source of noise unbearable to the insects.

As years passed and the human colony grew, they learned to coexist with the Swarm and avoid the Antlion territories. A new generation was raised in the harsh wastelands of H.E.L. VI. The ore that Helians were digging up became the foundation for many new mining towns all across the planet.

The Helians would have continued living peacefully in isolation, if not for one random event that brought the attention of the Galactic Corporations to their home.

A Corporate Guard corvette in hot pursuit of a smuggler vessel chased it into a debris field. Lost and unable to steer away, they soon both ended up crash-landing on the surface of H.E.L. VI. And while the pirate was unlucky enough to hit an Antlion sinkhole, the military vessel managed a hard landing on a rocky plateau not far from one of the Helian mining towns.

Soon enough, the Corporates dispatched a squad of Mobile Frames to investigate the obviously man-made structures. Instead of catching a smuggler carrying corporate property, the Corporate Guard discovered a whole planet inhabited by what were technically corporate employees, using corporate equipment to mine valuable ore from an uncharted planet for themselves. An outrageous violation of corporate policies!

It came as no big surprise that soon, the Corporate Guard took the town over, claiming the equipment - and the people - as Corporate Resources which they immediately repurposed for repairing the corvette. In a matter of hours, the newcomers were prepared to launch a probe into outer space, which would carry the big news to Corporate HQ.

In the meantime, the word spread quickly across H.E.L. VI that the Corporation had finally found them.

The Helian elders, those who originally crash-landed on this planet, held no illusions about what was going to happen when Corporate Prospectors would come to this world. Their hard-earned home would be taken from them, and they’d be slaving away for the Corporation for the rest of their lives, if not worse…

And so the miners rebelled. Gathering under the flag of newly-formed Helian Combine, they manned their laborer Mobile Frames to stop the Corporate Guard from alerting headquarters...

The Nomad Company was formed as a response to the Corporate Guard taking the local populace hostage in preparations to inform the Corporate HQ of the lost colony of H.E.L. VI.

Piloted by hardened miners and laborers, the Nomads are outdated workhorse Mobile Frames used by Helians pretty much for everything.

Originally the Nomad Company consisted of two slightly modified Frame types, the Soldier and the Raider.

SMG. A basic automatic submachine gun for your average guerilla Joe. Relatively compact, bears a bull-pup mag Arm shield for basic protection. Said to withstand a direct hit from a 155 mm artillery shell, but only once Vernier boosters Short range radio for inter-company communication

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SMG. A basic automatic submachine gun for your average guerilla Joe. Relatively compact, bears a bull-pup mag A pile driver for close combat Vernier boosters Short range radio for inter-company communication

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Later on the Combine managed to recover the crash-landed smuggler ship that carried Corporate-made hardware, including a couple of anti-tank rifles, thus giving birth to the Ranger.

Heavy anti-tank rifle A mirage projector array. Is not a perfect stealth system, but makes it hard for enemy to target A leg-mounted shield/stabilizer An advanced optics array for long-range aiming

The standard detachment of the Nomad Company would thus consist of two Soldiers, two Raiders and one Ranger.

Last edited by TheMugbearer on Wed Apr 18, 2018 2:42 pm, edited 1 time in total.